SAN FRANCISCO — A Canadian citizen arrested by San Mateo County sheriffs in a car carrying 18 kilos of cocaine and 148,000 ecstasy pills was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison Wednesday, an official said.
Henoke Teclechaimanot flew from Vancouver, Canada on May 20, 2008 to supervise a drug deal involving the pills and cocaine, said U.S. Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello.
On May 21, he was a passenger in a rental car carrying the drugs when Sheriff's deputies pulled over the vehicle in San Mateo. Last November, Teclechaimanot pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy to distribute ecstasy charges, Russienello said.
A letter from his attorney, Nina Wilder, said apart from the one poor decision to get involved in the transaction, Teclechaimanot has had a law abiding life. It will also be impossible for the man's parents, who fled to Canada from war-torn Eritrea in order to give their children a better life, to visit their son in a U.S. prison because they can't afford it.
"This case is a parent's worst nightmare" Wilder wrote.
Teclechaimanot faces deportation to Canada after he has completed his sentence.
This is what I call a total failure in the Eritrean household leadership. As time goes on, we see more and more Eritrean kids taking unacceptable risk toward the low down spiral. Most Eritrean parents are hard working people, but they fail to realize the main reason why they are in the West. They are in the West because they want to give their children a better shot at life, but they are tricked by financial gains. Instead of focusing on the lives of the children they focus on less important things, such as buying nice cars and homes. Shaping the children lives is by far more imporant than driving a nice car or living in a big house. That is where we see children registering one failure after another, joining gangs, quiting on education and followed by a life of crime.